MPs warn over nuclear space bombs and solar flares The government must take more seriously the threat of a nuclear weapon being exploded in space by a rogue state, MPs have warned.

The Defence Select Committee said the resulting radiation pulse could disrupt power and water supplies, UK defence and satellite navigation systems.

Its chairman, Tory MP James Arbuthnot, said an attack was "quite likely".

The committee is urging ministers to invest in more "hardened" technology to cope with such an event.

It looked at the threat to the UK's technological infrastructure from "electromagnetic pulse" (EMP) events in space, which could also include the eruption of solar flares....On the possibility of a nuclear missile being fired into space and exploded, he said: "I personally believe that it's quite likely to happen. It's a comparatively easy way of using a small number of nuclear weapons to cause devastating damage.

"The consequences if it did happen would be so devastating that we really ought to start protecting against it now, and our vulnerabilities are huge."

Mr Arbuthnot added: "it would actually have a far more devastating effect to use a nuclear weapon in this way than to explode a bomb in or on a city. The reason for that is it would, over a much wider area, take out things like the National Grid, on which we all rely for almost everything, take out the water system, the sewage system.

"And rapidly it would become very difficult to live in cities. I mean within a matter of a couple of days.

It matters not whether they see the threat, only if they act on what they see. I don't think anyone in Parliament will vote to lower their pensions, or their pork, to protect their grid. But O! how they will hear the shrieks and howls from the masses if this attack takes place. "You should have done something!" the people will scream.

Look. The Big Three (at the least) and probably a couple of more of the nuclear powers have bomb platforms in space. Without a doubt we, the Russians, and the Chinese have satellite borne EMP capabilities. Military thinkers take it as a given that any major nuclear exchange will be presaged by an EMP strike.

That's not the issue. If any of the Big Three use their EMP capabilities, all hell is out for lunch anyway, and the rubble will be jumping in TEOTWAWKI, Big Nuke Edition.

It's the terrorists with one or two lousy bombs and some sort of Scud-primitive way of getting them high enough.

That - and Carrington Events - are what we really need to be worrying about in terms of EMP. If an EMP strike is followed by three or four hundred nuclear weapons, EMP is going to be the least of our worries.

It matters not whether they see the threat, only if they act on what they see. I don't think anyone in Parliament will vote to lower their pensions, or their pork, to protect their grid. But O! how they will hear the shrieks and howls from the masses if this attack takes place. "You should have done something!" the people will scream.

Well if a Carrington takes out the grid, nobody will be able to hear the proles screaming anything. And maybe that's part of the political calculus...?